Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon on left
Friday, May 11, 2007
AP via Fox
WASHINGTON — The U.S. commander in northern Iraq said Friday that he doesn't have enough troops for the mission in increasingly violent Diyala province.
Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon also said that Iraqi government officials are not moving fast enough to provide the "most powerful weapon" against insurgents — a government that works and supplies services for the people.
Mixon commands the area that includes Diyala province, north of Baghdad. It was a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency before the start of the Baghdad security crackdown and has worsened since militants fled there to avoid the increased U.S.-led operations started in the capital in February.
Mixon has already received extra troops and has increased attacks on militants. But he has asked Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, for more.
"I laid out a plan for General Odierno on the numbers of forces that I would need," Mixon told Pentagon reporters by video conference from Iraq. "We have made progress ... we have taken terrain back from the enemy. General Odierno intends to give me additional forces as they become available."
House Democratic Leaders Offer Plan to Fund Iraq War Through July
Pentagon Announces 35,000 Soldiers, Marines to Begin Deploying to Iraq This Fall
There are some 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Initially, President Bush ordered an extra 21,500 combat troops to the country to help calm sectarian violence — mainly in Baghdad. An additional 7,000 or so will go in support positions.
The last of five extra brigades are to arrive by June.
Mixon has about 3,500 troops in Diyala and there are about 10,000 Iraqi soldiers and several thousand Iraqi police, with 3,000 more police approved but not yet hired and trained.
Mixon said Diyala's government is so ineffective at providing services that it could be described as nonfunctioning.
He also blamed national ministries in Baghdad, because the weak government hampers coalition efforts to make the country secure. Showing Iraqis that their government can provide for them "will be the most powerful weapon against this insurgency," Mixon said.
Both Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have visited Iraq since April and urged the Iraqi government to move faster on issues that could bring reconciliation in Iraq.
Again, looking for "top down" solutions.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the State Dept, or a harden version of the "Peace Corps"?
But the US cannot even instruct the Iraqi with regards floor maintaince in US funded projects, how could we presume to advise them on governence?
Some good, some bad here from Ralph Peters.
ReplyDelete"Where is the State Dept..."
ReplyDeleteMIA.
Peters:
ReplyDelete"It's past time for our senior leaders to jettison the political correctness and fight to win. But they honestly don't know how anymore. They've been so thoroughly drugged with failed academic theories about counterinsurgency-with-lollipops that they're more concerned with avoiding embarrassments than with killing the enemy.
"The bitter truth is that, in the type of conflicts we now face, we must be willing to fight as ruthlessly and savagely as our opponents. We have to play by their moral rules. Stay-at-homes who never served will howl in indignation, but the alternative is defeat."
The bitter truth is that the civilian leadership is deathly afraid of international controversy and condemnation. The civilian leadership is extremely sensitive to unfavorable headlines and has an itchy intolerance of bad PR. This has been true for as long as I can remember.
And to blame the generals for not fighting by the other guy's moral rules - which our own rules, Peters damn well knows - do not allow, is just obnoxious.
But this is why the best thing we could do for ourselves is to act upon the advice of 2164th. Go silent and dark. Ditch the Barnum and Bailey Roadshow, re-bury the stinking corpse of Woodrow Wilson, and carry on by other means.
ReplyDeleteThe military cannot do that. But there are those who can.
Civilians aren't the only ones who have bought into the idea that you can win wars through solely negotiations and soft-handed approaches. David Galula called them the "psychologists." Galula himself, is the latest poster boy for the -softer- COIN, but what is glossed over is that along with coopting the population he also executed captured insurgents as examples.
ReplyDeleteTrish, I have come to the conclusion that people prefer fantasy, self delusion...Bush Delusion Syndrone. You quoted from here...
ReplyDelete2164th said...
Gentleman, this is not personal, this is business. The visceral reaction of most of you is heartening and pleasing, as it indicates I am with a band of brothers. But you will not teach the Islamists a lesson. This harlot is beyond redemption and she knows the tricks of her trade. Radical Islam is the HIV of human religion. It is incurable, contagious, dissipating and leads to dementia and death. There is no known cure and it is mutating daily. We are being tested by a rapidly spreading depravity, winning engagements but losing the war. We started losing at the beginning by lying to ourselves over what the war was about. War on Terror, what a lovely euphemism, the "have a nice day" of PC. The jihadists know what this is about. They are going to destroy the infidel. They have sent us an invitation and it is time to RSVP.
Now we have been cautioned about the law. There is however THE LAW. The most sacred human law is above any court, convention or treaty. It is the Law of Survival. It is the ultimate form of justice and it is time to engage. We know who the enemy is. They told us. We know where they meet. We know a lot about them. It is time to go silent and go dark. No speeches, no threats, no lawyers, no mercy. Isolate and eliminate the radical clerics, financial supporters, politicians, tacticians, academics, theorists, and all supporters of radical Islam. We will find Islamic friends and allies to do most of the work. There is no other way to win this war.
5/12/2006 12:39:00 A
"The military cannot do that. But there are those who can."
ReplyDeleteAt present time, I think this is about as moot a question as whether to go to war with Iran.
2164, where did that post come from? I'd like to read the thread.
ReplyDelete"At present time, I think this is about as moot a question as whether to go to war with Iran."
ReplyDeleteAt present time. Tomorrow eventually comes.
"Galula himself, is the latest poster boy for the -softer- COIN, but what is glossed over is that along with coopting the population he also executed captured insurgents as examples."
ReplyDeleteMy dad has a photograph on his desk of a captured German spy being blindfolded at a wooden post by a US NCO moments before his execution. As per the Hague Convention.
What're the odds, cutler, that this would be done today? Openly.
You're preaching to the already converted.
ReplyDeleteFrom almost two years ago:
"The recent Amnesty International report lamented the US’s failure to apply Geneva Convention protections to Iraqi, Taliban, and Al Qaeda fighters. The Geneva Conventions commands that detainees are only required to provide “name, rank, and serial number.” The stupidity required to think this is reasonable is staggering. The truth is that many of the fighters in question, particularly Al Qaeda, fall outside the Geneva conventions because they are uninformed fighters who regularly butcher civilians. If the GC was actually applied to them as they really are, most of them would be shot out of hand."
At BC:
ReplyDeletePeter Grynch said...
Wretchard, you make a wonderful point about betraying our allies and the inevitable cost that will follow. When Jimmy Carter betrayed the Shah of Iran he fired the starter pistol for the Islamisist Movement.
What is needed in order to win the war in Iraq is to seize the semantic high ground. Don't call it a "war" call it "reconstruction". We are not "killing terrorists" we are "protecting the innocents". Don't call it "military funding" call it "foreign aid".
Done properly, we can get the same brain-dead bleeding hearts who want us to send troops to Darfur in the midst of their civil war to support our actions in Iraq.
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By the time W leaves office, we will have tried dozens of re-inventions of the wheel.
Ask, and you shall receive, Trish:
ReplyDeletealso at BC
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The Way We Were
This old newsreel video clip from the Smoking Gun recalls the rules under which the Greatest Generation won World War 2.
And the phrase "martyred" at the end of the video clip has an unaccustomed application.
Hey now, Doug.
ReplyDeleteThat was the good war, this is the bad war.
We threw flowers at Germany and Japan.
We were so civilized, we covered the Stretch Marks.
ReplyDeleteMussolin Executed
ReplyDelete"i"
ReplyDeletePhotoshop does wonders, doug.
ReplyDeleteWrinkles, strechmarks, the whole litney.
Lots cheaper than surgery.
All yours Cutler
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRR and little Jerry Brown (Corrected)
ReplyDeleteThough Victory can escape us for a short sec, Wisdom shall be retained in its place.
ReplyDelete2164th wrote:
ReplyDelete"We know who the enemy is. They told us. We know where they meet. We know a lot about them."
I remember that post well. It has a certain appeal, the confidence, the certitude of it but, but, that little section I just cited, I think, illustrates the difficulty. It is false, it is wrong, we don't know any of that shit - the enemy: who they are and where they reside - all that follows is just like what we are doing now, flailing at ghosts. It is, unfortunately, not that simple.
There's a famous Life magazine photograph of a young Army or Navy wife happily penning a letter to her husband, who has sent her the skull of a Japanese soldier - which sits on the table in front of her. (Gosh, I never get skulls in the mail.)
ReplyDeleteSociety changes and the military changes with it - and I am averse to bad-mouthing and bemoaning the very society that so many take great pains to defend. (One reason I don't like VDH.)
But the frame of mind with which we approach this task (as a rule, if it's got a name like Enduring Freedom, run as fast as you can in the other direction) leaves much to be desired.
Flailing at ghosts isn't the worst of it, ash. Not being able to get at the truly flesh and blood - that's the worst of it.
From cutler's link:
ReplyDelete"The recent Amnesty International report lamented the US’s failure to apply Geneva Convention protections to Iraqi, Taliban, and Al Qaeda fighters. The Geneva Conventions commands that detainees are only required to provide “name, rank, and serial number.” The stupidity required to think this is reasonable is staggering.
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Not surprisingly, one of the few weapons we do have is the suggestion that your lack of cooperation will result in a local (that is, Iraqi, Afghan) detention stint or your express return home for same. To be held by the Americans in most cases is a pretty good deal. Our allies (who are not nice) become a point of psychological leverage.
Ash,
ReplyDeleteCertitude makes for a win.
Blair frustration with US revealed
ReplyDeleteBRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair was "tearing his hair out" over his inability to influence the Pentagon over postwar planning in Iraq, his former political secretary has claimed.
Lady (Sally) Morgan, in an interview with The Guardian said: "We could talk to the US State Department and to the President, but we had no leverage over the Defence Department, and he (Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary) had been given the power to make decisions," she said. "It was up to Bush to do the right thing and be in charge, but he was not. Sometimes he (Blair) was tearing his hair out."
Lady Morgan said George Bush was "straight to deal with", and many of the best meetings with him were when he and Mr Blair were one to one. She added: "That is why Tony went to Washington so much. The video conference was no substitute."
Leading Labour figures have spoken openly for the first time about Iraq as Mr Blair set out his departure timetable.
Lady Morgan said Mr Blair thought about resigning because he could not see himself ever being freed from allegations that he had deliberately misled the public over the war.
Mr Blair's officials have previously been reticent about discussing disputes between him and Mr Bush over the war. The two men will meet in Washington next week to discuss the situation in Iraq.
A one eyed man, in the land of the blind, is king.
ReplyDeleteMr Bush delegated Authority, the Responsibility stayed with him, though.
Many a "good meeting" has fallen short when implementation of the decisions made did not occur, as proposed.